Eliot’s Dramatic Method in The Cocktail Party

Abstract

Eliot takes the dramatic quality as a measure for great poetry and returns to the drama throughout his poetic career. It is worth comparing Eliot’s two typical forms of drama, the early dramatic monologue and the later verse play, to trace his interests in the dramatic method. For this purpose, this essay is to compare The Cocktail Party (1949) and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock” (1917). The Cocktail Party is profounder and more complex in dealing of his life-long theme: the mundane human world is just a part of paltry illusion. To take a critical objectivity, Eliot formally distributes his authorial point of view among several main characters. To avoid ambiguity, however, Eliot often speaks directly through his characters. This reduces them into his mouthpieces, and eventually undermines the aesthetic distance as well. Though superior in theme, The Cocktail Party is inferior in the dramatic effect due to this direct loyalty of major characters to their author’s point of view.